Pole Baker: A Novel

THE planter alighted from the dusty-little train under the crumbling brick car-shed at Darley, and, turning his heavy hand-luggage over to the negro porter, he walked across the grass to the steps of the Johnston House. Here he was met by Jim Thornton, the dapper young clerk, who always had a curled mustache and oiled hair smoothed flatly down over his brow.

“Oh, here you are, right side up, Captain Duncan!” he cried, cordially. “You can't stay away from those level acres of yours very long at a time.”

“No, Jim,” the short, thick-set man smiled, as he took the extended hand; “as soon as I heard spring had opened, I got a bad case of homesickness, and we left Florida. My wife and daughter came a week ago. I had to stop on business in Jacksonville. I always like to be here in planting season; my men never seem to know exactly what I want done when I am away. Jim, I've got a lot of fine land out there between the river and the mountains.”

“I reckon you have,” laughed the clerk, as he led his guest into the hotel office. “There's a neighbor of yours over there at the stove, old Tom Mayhew, who runs the big store--Mayhew & Floyd's--at Springtown.”

“Oh, I know him mighty well,” said Duncan. “How are you, Mayhew? What are you doing away from your beat? I thought you'd be behind that counter such fine weather as this.”

“Trade's dull,” said the merchant, who was a tall, spare-made man, about sixty-five years of age, with snow-white hair and beard. “Farmers are all at the plough, and that's where they ought to be, Duncan, if they expect to pay anything on their debts this fall. I had to lay in some stock, and ran down to Atlanta day before yesterday. My young partner, Nelson Floyd, usually does the replenishing, but the books got out of whack and I left him to tussle with them; he's got a better head for figures than I have. I've just sent to the livery-stable for a horse and buggy to take me out; how are you going?”

“Why, I hardly know,” answered the planter, as he took off his straw hat and wiped his bald head with a silk handkerchief. “I telegraphed Lawson, my head overseer, to send somebody to meet me, and I was just wondering--”

“Oh, you'll be attended to all right, Captain Duncan,” said the clerk, with a laugh, as he stood at the register behind the counter. “Pole Baker was in here last night asking if you had arrived. He said he had brought a buggy and was going to drive you back. You will make it all right if Pole sobers up long enough to get out of town. He was thoroughly 'how-come-you-so' last night. He was in Asque's bar raising holy Cane. The marshal ordered Billy to close at twelve, but Pole wouldn't hear to it, and they came in an inch of having a fight. I believe they would if Mrs. Johnston hadn't heard it and come down. Pole has more respect for women than most men, and as soon as he saw her at the door he hushed up and went to bed.”

“He's as straight as a shingle this morning, captain,” put in Charlie Smith, a mulatto porter, who was rolling a pair of trucks across the room laden with a drummer's enormous, brass-bound trunk. “He was up before day asking if you got in durin' the night.”

“Well, I'm glad he's sobered up if he's to take me out,” said the planter. “He's about the biggest dare-devil out our way. You know him, don't you, Mayhew?”

“Know him? Humph! to the extent of over three hundred dollars. My partner thinks the sun rises and sets in him and never will close down on him. They are great friends. Floyd will fight for him at the drop of a hat. He says Pole has more manhood in him to the square inch than any man in the county, white or black. He saw him in a knock-down-and-drag-out row in the public square last election. They say Pole whipped three bigger men than he is all in a bunch, and bare-handed at that. Nobody knows to this day how it started. Nelson doesn't, but I heard it was some remark one of the fellows made about Nelson himself. You know my partner had a rather strange start in life--a poor boy with nobody to see to his bringing-up, but that's a subject that even his best friends don't mention to him.”

The captain nodded understanding. “They tell me Pole used to be a moonshiner,” he said; “and I have heard that he was the shrewdest one in the mountains. His wife got him to quit it. I understand he fairly worships the ground she walks on, and there never was a better father to his children.”

“He thinks well enough of them when he's at himself,” said Mayhew, “but when he's drinking he neglects them awfully. I've known the neighbors to feed them two weeks on a stretch. He's got a few enemies out our way. When he quit moon-shining, he helped some of the government officers find some stills over there. That was funny! Pole held off from the job that was offered him for a month, during which time he sent word everywhere through the mountains that he would give all his old friends plenty of time to shut up and quit making whiskey, but after his month was up he would do all he could against any law-breakers. He had to testify against several who are now at large, and they certainly have it in for him. He'd have been shot long ago if his enemies wasn't afraid of him. But they will do him one of these days; you may mark my prediction. He is as cool and collected in time of danger as General Lee used to be. By gum, I saw him actually save the lives of twenty of the best citizens of this town about a year ago.”

“You don't mean it!” exclaimed the planter. “That's what he did, captain,” Jim Thornton cried out from behind the counter. “You bet your life that was a ticklish time. I wasn't here, but I heard of it.”

“No, you wasn't on duty then,” said Mayhew. “I remember that, because Mrs. Johnston had to attend to the office herself. It happened, captain, that a squad of negro soldiers, commanded by a white officer, owing to some wash-out on the road this side of Chattanooga, had to lay over here all day, and they got about half drunk and started in to paint the town. They marched up and down Main Street, two abreast, looking in the stores and making fun of everybody and everything they saw. Finally hell got in them as big as house afire, and they come right in here, forty strong. The leader, a tall, black buck, over six feet high and weighing about two hundred, went up to Mrs. Johnston at the counter and said they wanted dinner. The old lady, feeble and gray-headed as she is, isn't a child. She knew exactly what it meant, and she was as white as a sheet, but she told the rascal quietly that her house did not entertain colored people.

“'That's what I've heard,' the negro said, 'but we are going to eat here to-day or know the reason why.'”

“Good heavens!” exclaimed Duncan, “he ought to have been shot.”

“Well,” went on Mayhew, “while she was trying to put him off, somebody ran for the white officer and told him to go order his men out, and he did start in this direction, but it was with a sneer and several questions about why his men couldn't eat in any hotel in America, and so forth, and when he got here in the office he just stood around and took no steps to stop the trouble at all. He sidled over to the cigar-case and stood there twisting his yellow mustache and turning his nose up, but he wouldn't give the command, and that made the negroes more unruly. Mrs. Johnston appealed to him, telling him it was his duty to clear her house of his drunken men, but he simply gave her no satisfaction. However, you can bet trouble was brewing. The news had spread like wildfire down the street, and every merchant and clerk that was any man at all shoved a pistol in his pocket and quietly slid into this room. They didn't seem to have any business here, and it was plain that the captain, who was a Northern man, had no idea he was so near an ambush; but a battle hung by a single hair. Both factions was armed, and one shot would have produced a hundred. The white citizens all had their lips set tight together, and not one had a thing to say to any other. They were all here for simple business, and each man was going to act on his own responsibility. The diningroom was open, and one or two drummers had gone in to dinner, and every white man's eye was on the door. They seemed to have made up their minds, one and all, that the first negro that made a break in that direction would never cross the threshold. I've been in war and carnage, but, by gum! that was the most ticklish situation I ever faced.

“Just about that time I saw Pole Baker run in, panting and out of breath. He had been doing a job of whitewashing down at the wagon-yard and had on a pair of somebody's old overalls that wouldn't meet at the waist and struck him about the knees. He'd lost his hat in his hurry, and his long, bushy hair was all tangled. 'Have you got a spare gun?' he asked me, his lip shaking, his eyes bulging out. I told him I didn't have anything but a pocket-knife and might need that, and he plunged into the bar-room and tried to borrow a pistol from Billy Asque, but Billy was on the way out with his in his hip-pocket, and Pole come back frothing at the mouth and begun to look under that stove there.

“'What you looking for?' said I. And he belched up an oath and said: 'Damn it, what you think I'm looking for--a feather bed? I'm looking for something to hit that black whelp with that's leaning over the register threatening that poor old lady.'

“But he couldn't lay his hand on a thing, and it looked like he was about to cry. Then things got more serious. The negroes had bunched together, and we saw plainly that their plan was to make a break in a body for the dining-room. I saw Pole throw his big head back like our general used to do when things had reached a crisis.

“'If something isn't done, and done quick,' I heard him say to himself, 'some of the best citizens of this town will lose their lives, and all for a gang of drunken niggers. Something's got to be done, Mr. Mayhew,' he said to me.

“'Yes, but _what?_--that's the question,' said I.

“Then I saw him act. Without a single weapon in his hand, he stalked as straight as an arrow through the gang of negroes, elbowing them right and left, and went up to the captain and clamped his hand on his shoulder so heavy that I heard it clear across the room.

“'Looky' here, you damned white coward!' he said, 'you order them coons out of here in five seconds or, by God, I'll knock every tooth in your head down your throat, and wedge 'em in with your gums. Quick, order, I say!'

“The chap was about Pole's height, but he looked like a sapling beside a knotted oak, and he stared through his cigar smoke in astonishment. But Pole's left hand came down with a ringing slap on his shoulder-straps that almost brought the fellow to his knees, and Pole's big fist slid up close to his eyes, and then drew back for a sledge-hammer lick. The fellow blinked, and then with a growl and a sickly look about the mouth he gave the order. The negroes looked at him in astonishment, but Pole waved his big right hand and said, 'Get out! get out of here, and that mighty quick!' They moved slow, to be sure, but they went, the officer standing to one side looking plumb whipped. They had all gone down the steps, and the captain, mad and sullen, was about to follow, when suddenly Pole reached out and caught him by the collar and yanked him right back into the crowd that was surging forward.